


you'll write everything with your eyes

by am_fae



Category: Pan Wołodyjowski (1969), Pan Wołodyjowski | Fire in the Steppe - Henryk Sienkiewicz, Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Alternate Universe - All Female, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Genderswap, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28007541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/am_fae/pseuds/am_fae
Summary: Something grows between Ada, the ill-suited heiress to her father's house, and Azja, the family's Tatar servant, once the daughter of Tuhaj-bej's favorite wife.Azja/Ada Nowowiejska told through prompts for Yuletide, for an AU that LucyLovecraft and I dreamed up!
Relationships: Adam Nowowiejski/Azja Tuhajbejowicz
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2
Collections: Ogniem i mieczem fem!AU





	you'll write everything with your eyes

It was so _boring_. Ada’d looked everywhere in the house for Azja, from the high eaves to the wine cellar they weren’t supposed to enter, calling out for her to come and play. Ewa was too small to be any fun, and Ada had a plan forming for the whole afternoon. She could be a hussar and Azja could be, well, a bandit or something, and they could fight with sticks or spoons and then bandage each other with scarves in Ada’s and Ewa’s bed. She’d looked _twice_ , because Azja was littler and she could be tricky, having learned to be very good at hiding. And still, no Azja.

She wasn’t in the kitchen garden, wasn’t even in that one specific spot within the courtyard palisade that you couldn’t see from the windows.

So she had to be outside. Ada lingered on the threshold, breath puffing whitely in the air. Outside even that courtyard was probably something her father would have something to say about. But Father wasn’t there for the day, away for the first time in months. (Which was why Ada was so frustrated: Azja was _wasting_ a rare and plum opportunity to play inside with the sticks.) And maybe Azja was lost.

Probably lost. And the snow was only getting deeper, fluffy flakes already blowing in through the cracked door to stick in Ada’s brown hair. It would probably cover her up entirely, the spindly creature. A real soldier wouldn’t let that happen.

Ada made her way to the gate and out into the surrounding valley with resolute determination. Her new soft boots crunched on the frozen ground, leaving a dark trail the new snow rushed to fill.

_Once when they were very little Azja had gone missing and finally been found asleep in a closet for linens, amid embroidered towels and the few silk dresses that had belonged, Ada thought, to Ada and Ewa’s mother. Azja had tugged the skirts’ shiny fabric around herself like a blanket. Ada’s father had pulled the shrieking girl out, sending linen to the floor. Before Ada’s amazed eyes, Azja bit her father’s arm and startled him so that he cast her hard to the floor, landing with a hard thud._

_“Azja!” Ada called, astonished and only half scolding. She was little too, but even she had learned not to_ bite _people._

_Azja clambered to her feet again with the elasticity of very young children and stumbled in Cook’s direction, whom she was treating to the sight of huge green eyes brimming with tears._

_Oh please! Ada thought. Somehow in a few short months Azja had become Cook’s favorite, and sure enough, the old woman took Azja up in her arms, saying something that quieted her. Ada would never have_ bitten _Father and gotten away with a hug._

 _Cook was the only one she easily understood, which was another thing that was so_ unfair _, because Ada so wanted to talk to Azja. If they couldn’t talk, how could they play at tin soldiers and dolls?_

_“Little whelp,” Father said. As he stepped forward, Cook’s arms tensed. “Give her here.”_

_“I’ll manage, panie.”_

_“Give her here!”_

_Cook set Azja down gently. Father gestured at the strewn linen, and the child flinched at the motion of his hand. “Do you see what you’ve done? To Ada’s mother’s things?”_

_A light of comprehension flickered in the child’s eyes. “Mother?”_

_Cook said something quietly and Azja subsided._

_“You’ve ruined them,” Father said. “Tell her that,” he told Cook._

_Azja scowled and began a quick stream of words in her bubbling language that made Ada’s father grab her thin shoulder and shake her. She broke his grip and hid behind Cook’s skirts. Father’s face was a thundercloud._

_“What did I say about that? A man has to understand his own servants. I won’t have her speaking that heathen tongue under my roof.”_

_Cook nodded. “Don’t anger, panie. She’s so small. She’ll learn, and dare I say, even forget.” There was a strange expression on the servant’s face._

_“No!” Azja protested when the rich dress went into the washbasin with the other linens. “Mother—”_

_Ada frowned. “It has to be cleaned,” she said patiently. Azja could be so slow sometimes._

_Azja blinked. Her bottom lip trembled dangerously, and she echoed the unfamiliar word back._

_“Washed, because you touched them, wretch,” Father snapped. He gestured at Cook again, a quick, sharp motion. Unseen, the child flinched again. “Make sure she understands that.”_

_He’d ordered a lock put on that cabinet. Even later, when the servants had forgot to latch it, Azja hadn’t found her way in again._

Would she have gone to the surrounding village? Ada squinted, trying to see through the white-and-grey landscape to the thin Tatar girl it surely contained. Unsure what direction to take, she picked a set of faded steps more or less at random—they looked small enough—and determinedly set off, heading away from the distant peasants’ huts and towards the stream the women did the washing at, in summer. Now the surface was frozen over, still dark in spots, like glass that had frosted over.

It was _cold_. Ada pushed aside thoughts of Azja freezing to death in some hole, never to be found again, swarthy skin gone all blue and… purple? _It’ll be alright_ , she told herself. If it was like that Ada would just have to go and look for the water of life or something to bring her back, like in the stories. A _real_ hussar would know what to do, she was sure.

Almost as soon as she’d thought it, she saw a huddled shape downstream from her, suspiciously Azja-sized. Dark hair escaped from the dull shawl wound about her upper half for warmth, tangling with the snow.

“Azja!” Ada called. “Hey!”

Azja looked back for a moment, narrow, stricken face a pale blur as Ada struggled to close the distance between them. Her bony frame poked from under the loose clothes the servants had found her, outgrowing them in the wrong places despite being so small. But the girl’d only turned for a moment before running in the opposite direction.

Ada cursed her as creatively as she knew how, which was not yet very. “Little fish, wait!”

The stones on the riverbank were slick with a thin coating of ice, and Ada fell hard as her boots slipped. Was—was Azja going out _onto_ the stream?

She could see the girl’s rag-wrapped feet on the ice now and winced. It was that sight that made Ada step after her, new boots skating perilously despite the fresh coating of snow over the water.

“Azja,” she called. “Come back!”

No answer. Ada reached out, lunging for her, and then heard the first perilous _crack_.

Suddenly afraid, she looked down at her feet, kicking aside the dusting of snow and stepping to the side as gingerly as she was able. But she was still on solid ground, so she carefully placed one foot forward, and then another, staring at her boots on the black ice.

Another crack and a quiet splash as if a stone had fallen into water were the only hints that something was wrong. Ada whirled. Azja wasn’t ahead anymore, on her way to the other side of the stream. Instead—

Ada cried out. Instead a dark head of hair bobbed in the water near the middle, where the thinnest ice had fallen through. She seemed to be struggling still to make her way away, as if Ada might not have noticed her disappearance.

“ _No!_ ” Ada rushed towards her, heedless of her slipping feet and the creaking noises the ice made. “Take my hand!”

In the very moment Azja looked her way with fear in her green eyes, Ada fell in, more ice shattering under her greater weight.

And screamed.

God in Heaven, how had Azja not made a noise? Her lungs were burning as she shrieked and fought to cough icy water at the same time. Every nerve in her body hurt at once. Hell was supposed to be _hot_. “Azja,” she gasped, dragging in more frosty air. _Help!_

The thought brought her back to herself a little, and her flailing became more focused as she reached for her. Her boots found the stony bed of the stream—she could reach here, if she tilted her head back to get air—and she clutched Azja’s thin body to her (warmer than the current, but cold, too cold). She lifted the smaller girl in the water, pushing her up as Azja’s hands scrabbled weakly at the surface of the ice. Between them Azja ended up in a heap on the ice next to the hole, crawling to a dark shape flung near her, which Ada only just noticed. It was a sorry sack bound together with cord. As Ada’s breath froze in her screaming lungs, Azja picked it up in far-too-pale hands, shivering now so that she might shake apart. She could barely get a hold on the thing. For Ada’s part, she was too cold, or still too shocked, to shiver, though her heart raced at least ten times its normal speed.

She would have croaked Azja’s name. As it was she could barely manage it. Azja crawled not back to her, but away, clutching her bag like a robber’s treasure. Ada maybe wasn’t the sharpest blade, but it hit her with overwhelming certainty, numbing. _She means to leave me here. She left_ to go away _._

No, falling in hadn’t hurt. _This_ hurt. Ada couldn’t speak with how much it hurt.

Ada fought to keep her numb feet on the riverbed and not be swept underwater, or worse, under the ice. When she found her footing again Azja was shivering dreadfully, but it hadn’t stopped her.

 _Little fish_ , Ada thought, and couldn’t even weep. She didn’t even care if she died here. What did she care for Father and little baby Ewa? She would die—her heart seized terribly—and maybe then Azja would miss her. But Azja wouldn’t… wouldn’t miss her… because she had come here to _leave_. Because…

That crumpled, dark silhouette had stopped its retreat, trembling and stricken, not that she could tell. It paused a long moment, while Ada stared up at the white sky and tried to think of a prayer to commend herself to the Queen of Heaven.

Rustling and trembling breaths made the ice creak dangerously all over again. Green eyes appeared in her frame of vision, hard and angry. Azja stuck out a pale brown hand.

“Take my hand. I said take my hand, idiot.” She grabbed Ada’s wrist for her anyway, lying over the ice in the direction they’d come from, not the one she’d run to. _When had Azja gotten so strong? She was too little for that, no muscle at all._

“Shut up.” Azja pulled hard at her, and Ada kicked away from the ground, and Azja grabbed her shoulder and Ada shoved with a last surge of desperate strength, until her elbows were on the ice and she could try to pull herself on, Azja yanking at her so hard she would have torn her arm off if Ada hadn’t been sturdily built.

“Back here,” Azja said reluctantly. “It’s thicker this way.”

The half-crawl to the rocky bank of the stream was the longest moment of Ada’s life. Azja half-dragged her when her strength finally seemed to give out, and Ada remembered protesting weakly as she’d done it.

There was a saddle blanket in Azja’s sack, a thick, coarse one, and the one extra set of clothes she had, and Cook’s old shawl, and Ada’s hands finally found some function pulling off some of her wet things to replace them with dry ones, tugging at Azja’s rags when the girl’s bony hands finally stuck and Ada blew against them to warm them. She’d lost the boots and it was still snowing, but she had Azja curled against her, Azja’s wet black hair moving softly with each of her breaths as she hugged her close under the rough blanket. After numbing cold, the gradual warmth between their bodies was the sweetest thing she had felt, painful, almost. Ada’s heart still felt tight, like it was beating far too fast to make up for the cold. She snuggled against Azja and clumsily chafed the thin limbs with her hands.

“You could’ve died,” Azja hissed, as if it were _her_ fault. Ada opened her mouth to say that and then tried to tell her the story with the water of life in it instead, but Azja hid her face against her shoulder and didn’t seem inclined to talking, so maybe Ada had done it wrong.

“You’re a fish even in winter, huh?” Wrapped up in the blanket, she couldn’t see Azja’s tattoos, but she’d seen them again when they struggled to dress, ink shaped to look like two fish over her chest. _More like minnows, in Azja’s case_. Azja promptly scowled, and Ada hugged her closer. There, that was better.

A servant sent out after Ada found them like that by the frozen bank before the sun had dipped too low in the sky. It took a long night of careful warming by the fire and hot drinks with raspberry syrup, and even a few days after, to restore the two girls to health. But their spirits were well on their way to healing already.

**Author's Note:**

> It seems more likely to me that the Nowowiejskis would have a Tatar manservant or something like Helena in Ogniem i mieczem, but I opted for staying true to Lu's & my original sandbox here with the cook because someone really needed to be a comforting presence to baby Azja
> 
> Title from a Baahubali lyric because I couldn't help it!


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